Leaving the two porkers where they are, you recollect your clothes and return to the food stand. The stand
operator shares a knowing glance. Before you can order a voice comes from behind you.
“Steak and eggs. From someone recent.”
A woman walks up beside you, slightly taller than yourself. Her evening dress is creased from a long night of
action, her long hair only slightly out of place. From the confidence she carries herself with you figure she
has to be one of the employees. She turns to look at you with a smile.
“I’d avoid the sausage myself. It’s kind of old. We haven’t gotten any new hogs for months.”
“Oh, I think I might have solved that problem.” On cue the two pigs waddle back onto the main thoroughfare.
The woman catches sight of them, then looks back at you with a surprised expression and renewed interest.
“You’re not just a normal new hire, are you?”
“I don’t know. Aren’t I?”
After collecting her breakfast the two of you find a seat next to a fenced off lake. In the lake’s center is a
small island, and you can just make out three figures staggering around on its beach.
“So it doesn’t bother you at all that that used to be a person?”
“If it used to be, then it isn’t anymore, so why should it bother me?” She cuts off a few slices of juicy
meat, then pauses with one mouthful halfway to her mouth. “Oh, I suppose you haven’t heard my name yet if
you’re
so new. I’m Cathy. And you?”
You have a name, of course. But that was the name of a person who hadn’t arrived on the island yet. Someone
who you are pretty sure you no longer are. It wouldn’t really take to still carry his name around.
“At the moment I don’t think I have a name.”
“Everyone has a name darling, and most of them aren’t suitable at all. How about we call you Annie then. Short
for Anonymous.”
“OK, I can live with that.” You lean back on the bench, watching the men on the island. One of them sets out
to try and swim to shore. Halfway across the lake he disappears below the waves and does not resurface. “So,
you said that like I ought to know your name. You a celebrity around here?”
“By vocation, not by choice. You will be too, if those hogs were your handiwork.”
You cock your head to the side, “What about them? Isn’t that normal for the island?”
Cathy barks out a laugh, holding her chest as she attempts to stop herself from choking. “There is no normal
here. But even for the island, no, that’s not the way things work. There are rituals, there are procedures,
there are limitations. But not for you.” Cathy takes the bone in her hand, stripping the thin film of meat off
its smooth surface with her teeth as juice dribbles onto her dress. “And, as you would have found out, not for
me.”
“You’re like me?” This was instantly followed by your second thought, “And no one else is?”
“We’re two peas in a very unique pod,” Cathy said as she flashed a smile.
This is an opportunity you can’t pass up. As quickly as possible you think up a list of questions for your
buxom teacher, then you order them for importance, “So what I can do, and what you can do, is an uncommon
ability. Is there a reason I can do this?”
“I’m not going to tell you that.”
Damnit. Next, “Am I still human?”
Cathy pauses to decide how, and how much, of that question she wants to answer, “Well, you certainly look like
one, don’t you? And you feel like one. And you’ve got all the right human bits. So, overall, I’d say you’re
probably human.”
Evasive, but it still gives you something to work with, “Some of the men I’ve touched I’ve been able to...
suggest things to, and through that I’ve controlled what they become. How much control do I have over men?”
Cathy didn’t hesitate at all on this one, “Now what fun would it be if I just told you that?”
Shut down, although that meant you can could look forward to more ‘science experiments’ in the future, “So we
can change men then. What about women?”
“Doesn’t take. You can change them but it wears back off. Might last minutes, might last hours, but it’s never
permanent. That’s hardly the point, anyways. “ The point? “And you can forget it if there’s something there
already. Normal, mundane humans only.”
That gives you a lot to think about, but now you’re feeling brave, “So can I change you?”
Cathy opens her mouth, but instead of speaking she simply touches your hand. A tingling spreads over your
naked flesh, and then you feel it; something from within Cathy’s hand is touching you, reaching inside you. It
flows through muscle and skin, carrying with it sensations you can not begin to put words to. For this moment
your hand is a hundred different hands, all of them yours, all of them being sensuously stroked to their very
core, and most of them feeling like no human sensation you’ve ever experienced before.
More than that you can feel Cathy’s hand as well, and you can feel a force, your force, doing the same thing
to her. Just as quickly as the connection had been formed Cathy breaks it off, placing her hand back in her
lap. You didn’t realise how hard you’d been breathing. From the beads of sweat on Cathy’s brow you assume the
touch had the same effect on her.
“Doesn’t work,” she says simply. “We cancel each other out.”
That touch did remind you about something you've been meaning to ask yourself, but you weren’t quite sure how
to broach. “Before I came to the island the way I thought about men... well, it was pretty different than the
way I do now. So... about women-” Before you can even finish the word Cathy launches herself at you. You throw
up your arms out of shock but you can’t stop her from locking lips with your own. The sensation returns in
full force, with more intensity than you could have been prepared for. You are dimly aware of her tongue
pressing into your mouth, but simultaneously you feel an entire selection of mouths also locked in embrace.
Fevered mouths caught in inescapable heat, cool mouths in subtle entrapment, the entire range of sensation and
beyond in every moment, every second.
Cathy is again the one to break away. You don’t think you’d have the willpower to do that yourself. This
encounter has stolen your breath entirely and left your seat soaked straight through. “So,” you say after
getting your voice back, “When do we do that for real?”
“What, and ruin all men for you? We’ll save that for a special occasion.” If she was feeling the same thing as
you then she had to have self control like the walls of fort knox. Cathy glances at her wristwatch. “I’ve got
time for one more, and then I really need to be somewhere.”
One more. Better make it a good one, even if you’re not quite sure what you’re asking, “So, I can’t change
women, and I can’t change you. Can I change myself?”
“What, you want to be a mindless beast?”
“Well, without the mindless part. And with some control, of course. Or maybe just a small change. I don’t
know.”
Cathy just stares at you, holding solid eye contact until you involuntarily look away. “No,” she answers, “Not
at all. That’s impossible.”
Your mentor pitches the rest of her steak into the lake and gets up. As you return to the mainstreet you see
one of the island’s caretakers about to lead the two pigs away. You cry out to stop him, but you’re not quite
sure what to follow up with.
“Looking for a new pet?” Cathy asks.
“Well, it’s just you said that sausage had been rare recently, so I wanted to...”
“You wanted first dibs?”
Did you? Less than an hour ago those had been people. Sleazy people, but still people. Did you really want to
eat them? Are you prepared to?
Cathy doesn’t wait to hear your lack of answer. She pulls what looks like a metallic magic wand out of her
handbag and approaches the sow. As she holds it the wand’s tip unfolds, forming a rounded symbol that
brightens to a white hot heat in an instant. The sow squeals pathetically as it is branded. Once the mark is
visible Cathy retracts her wand, dropping the now cool stick back into her bag.
“When you’ve come to a decision go to The Menagerie and ask for my private collection. They know me well
there.”
“Thanks. Where do I get one of those for myself?”
“Oh you’ll figure out soon enough.” And then Cathy is gone, and you are again alone with the hung over morning
crowd of Pleasure Island. You turn back to the lake in time to catch sight of something large displace the
water where Cathy had tossed her breakfast before it quickly dives again.